They say the collaborative, mobile radio system will allow car drivers and anyone else with a computer, a wireless connection and digital music files to not only broadcast their own station, but influence the play lists of other Roadcasting DJs transmitting in the area.

"We all felt the current radio system was still stuck in the 20th century," says project member Mathilde Pignol, who now works as an interaction designer at eBay.

The Roadcasting prototype is an application that runs on a laptop, a mobile music device such as an iPod, or theoretically the hard drive of a car, and works with a computer display or touch screen.

When turned on, the application manages the digital music files in the listener's collection, broadcasts those songs to others in the area, and can play Roadcasting stations from a 48-kilometre radius that match a listener's preference.

At the core of the program is software that reads a digital music file's metadata tags, such as genre, artist, album and title, and ranks them according to that data as well as the date the file was added to the library, the date the song was last played, and how frequently the tune was played.

The listener transmits a play list and allows the software to chose the next song or switch to a more interactive mode that lets other Roadcasters vote on the next tune.

Over time, the Roadcasting software gets better at automatically choosing the listener's favorite songs, whether from the listener's private library or from other stations.

So far the prototype has only been lab-tested and may not find its way into cars until they come equipped with ad hoc networking technology, that is peer-to-peer wireless components that transmit information from one computer to another without the use of a central base station.

Safety issues

Until Roadcasting does become a working reality, extensive testing of the impact such technologies as interactive radio might have on car safety needs to happen, said Professor Mohan Trivedi, director of both the Computer Vision Robotics Research Laboratory and the Laboratory for Intelligent and Safe Automobiles at the University of California, San Diego.

"We need to be very careful when we involve drivers in any activity that is going to take their mind away from the road," he said.

According to Trivedi, 15,000 deaths per year occur in the US due to driver distraction.

Trivedi also warns that with more cars transmitting information wirelessly, they risk being hacked in ways that researchers have not even considered.

The Roadcasting team has already completed some preliminary tests on driver distraction and is looking to refine the software before it's incorporated into automobiles.

In fact, the team encourages programmers to download the open-source software from their Web site and tweak it.